i tell stories

Oliver

School is well underway for us and with it, a new routine to our days. The beginning of each school year is always a good clean-out season for me. I get on top of things. Lists, charts, chores, stocking the fridge and freezer. I imagine it’s a very different version than what my Grandma might have done to prepare for the winter. Canning, butchering cows and chickens … the constant work of having a home and family just amplified for time away and ease back at home.

The last couple years of school have been what I will refer to as “The Adjustment Period” of my life for, um, ever. I think the last 5 or 6 years have been a trajectory of change and coming off of it, I finally found my footing. I’m a girl who will always look for whats coming, inquisitive and introspective. I want to learn and I often look backwards to discover how to move forward but that’s all changing too.

School felt like a celebration this year. A return to something worn and loved. A found object, which maybe is just us. Turns out being a young lady in this day and age is tricky and we’re learning all about it but also learning how to navigate those waters with her. A friend recommended the book “Untangled” to us, and parents/guardians of ladies in the tween/teen age group? I want you to read this book with me. And then we will get coffee together and be honest with each-other. And I will cry. And we will not be alone.

Honestly one of the best books I’ve read about parenting a girl so far.

There’s also so much shaking free in this season. I’m changing the rules I made for myself, or my family, that were more like contracts in the OR ELSE category. “It’s a work in progress” might be a better way to say it. I grew up knowing what I did not want but it wasn’t easy to stick up for what I did want. The opposite of knowing what not to do is rarely easy or perfect or the exact right thing instead. It’s a whole world of confusion because knowing the wrong thing doesn’t automatically make the rest of it explainable, or right.

I read something recently that resonated with me about Water and Rest. This amping up on lists and charts is always good but where I used to overcommit my capacity and then overwhelm my schedule, I’m learning to take it as it comes. Today I might be prepared for tomorrow but tomorrow I might need to rest or just go to the water and listen. And that’s what I do.

I watch my husband go to work and slay all day. He comes home tired and spent and always a little bit stressed about tomorrow. Being married to an Entrepreneur is kind of like saying that living in the moment is for “other people” because you’re constantly forecasting and planning and worrying and building and creating. Slowing down to be right here, to be right now … near impossible. Although it’s not impossible. We accomplished this on our trip out West this summer – removing ourselves from the regular distractions of location, we were forced to slow down and look around, outside of ourselves, to capture life.

It was beautiful. And this is the hardest part of coming back. I’m forever impacted by the summer we spent away. I know the difference, I experienced it. I want it, I crave it, I live for it. We came home to all kinds of questions, like what are we doing this for any way? And when do we stop doing this for us or for them or for (you name the reason) and start doing the things we dream about when no one is asking us for the answer.

Which brings up all kinds of questions that we don’t have answers to, of course. The big ones. The future ones. Should we?? has been a theme in our house lately. Should we do that? Should we do this? What should we do?

And enough. Enough already. I don’t know what’s around the corner but I know today is taken care of. I know less than I used to because there’s less certainty and more opportunity than I ever could have imagined. But some days I just stop running in circles and I stand still, and rest.

We left Montana and knew that by the time we stopped for the evening on day 6 we would be in Washington. As we were driving through mountains and crossing boarders and stopping for gas or bathroom breaks – the closer we got the more I started to recognize where we were. The smells were familiar, the backdrops were from my memories.

I was getting excited and ready to be there but I was also apprehensive and nervous. Gut checking my expectations, leaving them behind to just experience whatever was in my today. Right now. There was a song (even before we left) that I had started listening to that made me cry every time. A line in the song has to do with finally having a family, I don’t know, I’m sentimental I’ll give you that, but this was more. I was belonging to something, somewhere. And we were almost there.

The first place we stopped we decided to pass on (a first for the trip) and we kept heading west until we found a campground in the middle of nowhere. It was someone’s yard. The town looked like it was out of a movie set from the 30’s and even the bank was closing. There was one restaurant, the grocery store had closed. One gas station with $3 kleenex that we bought them out of. We ate dinner at the only restaurant and went back to our camper for the night. Trains were frequent and loud but the sunset was the most beautiful thing I had seen.

I think I was wary on day six. My nerves were a little shot, we had the first experience of a disappointing stop, the build up of arriving was starting to cap … it was time to land.

The next morning we got up and on our way, hitting up a breakfast spot along the way and making it to Fort Worden for our last night on the road.

If you don’t mind some home-video and can stomach a walking camera and a newbie figuring out how to focus and manage changing light … well then give it a go:

We made our first fire of the road trip, ate our first s’mores. Met our neighbors, thought we lost the kids and as we watched a creepy yellow van with his windows card-boarded up drive slowly out of the park I saw myself on the local news begging for my children’s safety and return … in reality, while we were running around and looking for them, they were collecting shells and having hot chocolate with our neighbors. So, I pooped my pants, metaphorically. But also, what the four letter words. We slept soundly that night, feet away from the beach and all in one place.

Day 8 was here! By my calculations we had a small drive to our final destination so we could spend some time at Fort Worden, but also in Port Townsend doing some sight seeing and shopping and lunching and generally things not having to do with sitting in a car. And we did. Slowly ambling around Port Townsend, getting lunch and coffee, and our first souvenirs.

We even packed up and spent more time at Fort Worden at their Whale exhibit and their Marine learning center with the kids before we got back in the car and started driving … then suddenly stopping in a long line of cars headed for a ferry that you would need a reservation to board. Which we did not have.

I loved this place.

So our last day of travel was supposed to be a teeny little trip. But it turned out longer and bigger than we thought – and included a ferry for the kids and an eventual arrival at our house with actual beds that night.

We landed in Montana on the 5th day – I’m pretty sure Aaron did some driving because he kept taking videos of the mountains while driving. He was seeing this landscape for the first time, winding hills dotted with cattle. An endless horizon and blue sky. He wasn’t just a passenger, finally 🙂 I remember being pretty excited about this development.

Montana is windy. Just, you know, like 25 mile an hour winds on a vista. That same vista our little pop-up camper was parked for the night in the open air between mountain peaks. We had conquered rain and thunder, clapping skies and sheets of rain. We had been through heat and fevers and the flu. Wind though? We didn’t really know what to do with wind. (Video of wind)

So we played games.

We walked around the camp ground for a bit and read some signs: we were in bear territory and on the menu for dinner? Sausage. Eggs. Breakfast for dinner … inside the camper.

The crackling of the stove and the smell of cooking breakfast with wind whipping through our camper, the kids sitting at the table playing games with snacks, and Aaron finally functioning as a human. This was a new normal by day 5. Rugged, dirty, take it as it comes living.

With Aaron’s new found sea legs for traveling he was also all of a sudden aware of time passing. And how much more opportunity there was to FILL THAT TIME WITH SEEING EVERYTHING. We laugh about it now, but his being sick for the first 5 days was really a blessing. We actually traveled. He can take about 2 hours in the car before he needs to stop and look around. About 30 minutes before he starts complaining about being in a car. And yet, we love to travel this way.

Which meant that after dinner we started asking around wondering if there was anything “to do around here.” We hopped back into the car for a little field trip.

We were almost there. I started seeing sunsets behind mountains and recognizing the smells in the air. I also stopped showering thinking the next place wouldn’t charge $3 for five minutes of water … Note to self: keep quarters.

Our third day of travel was what I always think about (poetically) when someone mentions a road trip. Scenic overlooks, random, yet memorable, passenger car diners on the side of the highway for lunch, great weather.

We went from gas light to gas light on day 3 in one stretch and where there was no gas station on our google maps for a good 12 more miles as the car was running on fumes with a sick Aaron, hungry kids, and very full bladders – there was this one, out of nowhere. Like a mirage, it appeared without warning or signage or welcome. It was just there, off I90.

That’s what Day 3 felt like. Small miracle after small miracle. Time stopped.

We took our time to enjoy the trip. Stopping at the Badlands, Wall Drug, and finally ending up at Center Lake campground in Custer State Park.

Wall Drug was everything it promised to be, cheesy. Touristy. A must see at least once in your life and a place to spend your souvenir cash. I did a similar trip with my parents the summer between 9th and 10th grade out west, so I had been to Wall Drug before (I had even been to the Yogi Bear campground from the night before as well). It was odd to be in the same places, take the same photos as I did 18 years ago. Everything has changed, absolutely everything from my first memories to now – not one thing is the same. Except it was all eerily unchanged. Same chipped paint statues to sit next to, same stores and salt water taffy, same smells.

This alley was my first sight of Wall Drug this time (we went in the back way) and it felt so incredibly right. Something I had never seen before. It made so much sense to me to see the guts first this time. To see what is supposed to be hidden, this isn’t what the billboards promised for the last 300 miles. And it’s what I saw first. Pallets. Blue barrels lined up against a brown wall. And then we went inside.

And nothing had changed.

Except everything was different.

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That night we arrived at Custer State Park looking for a campsite. Center Lake was where we landed and the kids quickly took off to explore. There were rocks to climb, lakes to visit, a campground to inspect. Water to discover and friends to make.

Center Lake is where this trip became our family trip – and not a walk down memory lane.

It rained like the world was ending that night. Thunder so loud I would sit straight up. Heart beating wildly, curled in a ball between lightning strikes and praying like crazy to see the morning light just one more time. We stayed dry, and you guys – I keep saying this because our camper has so many holes. Just so many. Patches, but holes. And we stayed dry that night (and every other night). The kids slept through it and somewhere in the middle of the night I stopped waking up to every gong of nightmarish thunder. With every crack of the skies above me, separated from the elements only by vinyl fabric and a couple blankets.

And we woke up on day 4 to birds chirping, fires crackling, and the kids already playing.

Aaron started driving on Day 2 … which put me in an extremely optimistic mood. That and 3 cups of road coffee later, I could do anything. Which came in handy when he asked me to drive the rest of the day and he fell asleep for the next 8 hours, on and off.

South Dakota was just really long. And hot.

By the end of the day, we had decided to splurge on a resort type campground for the kids and were excited to relax and eat some food together.

There was a heat advisory and we didn’t get the memo that Yogi Bear was basically a frat party for parents who forgot college was over and beer pong was done. The pool was murky, but cold, over capacity, but cold, and I started to bubble from the burn (no shade! no umbrellas!) and Aaron was now battling over 100 degree temp.

We went to a grocery store and bought some food for breakfast the next morning but caved and bought Chinese take-out for dinner. Then capped the longest day ever off with another swim before trying to go to sleep during the campgrounds DJ sponsored dance party. Our camper was literally vibrating. We called the front desk only to realize the noise was on purpose, and not even almost over.

We made it. A little crabbier than we started. We woke up on day 3 with headaches and short tempers. Packed up and got out of there. Day 3 was the redeeming factor to making it through that night. The corner had been turned. We were finally on vacation.